Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: need EBCDIC to ASCII function
Message-ID: <1989Oct13.164916.29217@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1060@einstein.misemi> <1989Oct4.203729.11700@utzoo.uucp> <10946@riks.csl.sony.co.jp>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 89 16:49:16 GMT

In article <10946@riks.csl.sony.co.jp> diamond@riks. (Norman Diamond) writes:
>In fact EBCDIC is just as well-defined as ASCII.  Only some IBM print
>trains did not use EBCDIC...

Most IBM devices are documented to use EBCDIC.  Not "a non-standard variant
of EBCDIC", not "a subset of EBCDIC", but "EBCDIC".   The trouble is, all
those devices accept slightly different character sets.  The EBCDIC terminals
don't agree with the EBCDIC printers, the printers don't agree with each
other, and none of them agrees with the so-called "standard".  EBCDIC may be
"just as well-defined as ASCII" in some theoretical sense, but that statement
has no practical relevance, because *nobody* uses that "well-defined" code.
-- 
A bit of tolerance is worth a  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
megabyte of flaming.           | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu